Friday, 18 October 2013

Gamcheon Culture Village in Busan

We were lucky enough to get another day off last Wednesday as it was the National Day of the Korean Alphabet, Hangeul. It was a grey and drizzly day spent within tight, colourful alleyways while we explored Gamcheon's Culture Village.

It's an old refugee settlement converted into a bright toy town. You're watched over by vibrant birds with human faces that hang onto the corner of buildings, we bumped into the Little Prince Hanging around and taking in the view and even stopped for a while in a tiny shop to get a caricature done. You're led around the hidden treasures by fancy wooden fish painted onto the buildings.

The little village on the hill is so cheerful that you forget that it was created in the thick of the Korean war, as the South Koreans were pushed further South by the North Koreans, there was nowhere left for them to go apart from to swarm Busan and take refuge in its mountains.